At the end of 2025, the Government of Kazakhstan, the National Bank and the Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market unveiled a document officially described as a full-fledged economic platform for the country’s development over the next three years. It is the Joint Programme for Macroeconomic Stabilisation and Improving Public Welfare for 2026-2028.
On paper, the goals look highly ambitious: to reduce and stabilise inflation, ensure economic growth of at least 5 percent per year, and achieve income growth that outpaces inflation by 2-3 percentage points. However, as noted by Murat Temirkhanov, adviser to the Chairman of the Management Board of Halyk Finance, behind these attractive formulations lie a number of systemic contradictions.
Inflation under control - but not quite
The programme correctly identifies the key sources of inflation: strong domestic demand driven by the growth of consumer lending, external geopolitical risks, weakening of the tenge, rising import and food prices, and a powerful fiscal impulse. The document emphasises that budget consolidation should become the main disinflationary factor in the medium term.
This assessment is hard to dispute. The problem, according to experts, lies elsewhere: the proposed measures are poorly aligned with classical principles of countercyclical fiscal policy.
Formally, the government does plan to reduce the use of National Fund resources as early as 2026. At the same time, however, the programme envisages a large-scale expansion of quasi-fiscal stimulus through the National Investment Holding Baiterek.
KZT 8 trillion per year - outside the budget
According to the programme, in 2026 the state will once again channel KZT 1 trillion in budget funds to Baiterek. In addition, the holding plans to raise up to KZT 7 trillion on domestic and international markets. As a result, the volume of direct and indirect support for priority sectors may reach around KZT 8 trillion per year.
Formally, these are not budget expenditures. In practice, however, the holding’s borrowings are carried out under explicit or implicit state guarantees. This means they represent classic quasi-fiscal operations that fuel domestic demand and create additional inflationary pressure.
It is no coincidence that a mission of the International Monetary Fund pointed directly to the risks of such operations back in November 2025. IMF experts stressed that restraining large fiscal and quasi-fiscal programmes is a necessary condition for reducing inflation, narrowing the consolidated budget deficit and rebuilding macroeconomic buffers.
Income growth - but based on what?
Another sensitive issue is real household income. The programme declares that incomes will grow faster than inflation, yet it does not explain which specific factors are expected to deliver this result as early as 2026, given that inflation itself is projected at 9-11 percent.
The document also offers no clear answer to another fundamental question: which new measures are supposed to drive faster growth in private domestic investment and foreign direct investment.
Old recipes under a new label
A separate chapter of the programme is devoted to “quality and sustainable economic growth”. Once again, it lists familiar priorities: economic diversification, higher labour productivity, development of non-resource exports, and support for agriculture, metallurgy, petrochemicals, transport, energy, engineering and tourism.
The problem is that almost identical formulations have been used in Kazakhstan’s strategic documents for more than 20 years, starting with the Industrial and Innovative Development Strategy for 2003-2015. Yet the underlying structural problems have never been resolved.
Investment dynamics are particularly telling. In 2021, when the National Development Plan to 2025 was approved, the target was to raise fixed capital investment to 30 percent of GDP. In reality, this figure stood at just 14.2 percent of GDP in 2024 and is expected to reach only about 15 percent in 2025.
The situation with foreign direct investment is similar. Instead of the planned USD 30 billion per year, the economy attracted USD 17.8 billion in 2024 and USD 14.2 billion in the first nine months of 2025.
Less state - only in rhetoric
The programme includes a section on reducing the state’s role in the economy. Here too, however, there is a sense of substitution rather than real change. Instead of genuinely reducing state participation through privatisation, the emphasis is placed on “optimising” the operations of state-owned companies.
Meanwhile, the presidential decree of May 10, 2024 on economic liberalisation explicitly set the goal of reducing state intervention and developing competition. An expert review by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, published in November 2025, also pointed to the excessive role of the state as one of the key reasons behind Kazakhstan’s weak economic growth.
Yet the programme contains no analysis of how this decree is being implemented or how the current scale of state and quasi-state involvement distorts market mechanisms. On the contrary, the document effectively entrenches a further expansion of the state’s role through large-scale subsidised lending that replaces the banking system and capital markets.
Bottom line
The new programme is presented as a strategic development document for 2026-2028. However, as Murat Temirkhanov notes, it still lacks a critical review of past mistakes, clear performance indicators and credible mechanisms for transitioning to sustainable, private-sector-led and competitive growth.
For now, the impression remains that Kazakhstan’s economy will continue to move by inertia - with high inflation, heavy dependence on the state, and the hope that large-scale quasi-fiscal stimulus will once again deliver results. As experts emphasise, many of the remaining questions require a separate and much deeper discussion.
